The Forgotten City is the first mod in history to win a national Writers' Guild award with its script. It is a critically acclaimed expansion mod offering a unique 6 - 8 hour experience: a murder mystery investigation set in an ancient underground city. You'll need to solve it using your wits, and the ability to travel through time. It has a dark, non-linear story in which you'll interrogate suspects, explore the city and its many secrets, and navigate challenging moral dilemmas. It features multiple endings, an original orchestral score, and professionally voiced dialogue.

The Forgotten City is a Skyrim quest mod created by Nick Pearce, Creative Director and Founder of Modern Storyteller. More information about his work developing The Forgotten City into a standalone game can be found at the links below. We encourage discussion of the Skyrim mod, but ask that discussion on the stand alone game be limited to it's relation to Skryim. If you enjoy the mod or discussion about it, we do encourage you to look into Nick's other work.

Once you find the arbiter kill him, loot his helmet from his corpse, go back in time and show it to him. You should then be able to convince him that the Dwarves law will no longer work and the city will open up to the rest of the world.

The best mod I have ever played for Skyrim, I unconditionally recommend it to everyone. Sucked me in for hours when I first played it. Even though the beginning is a bit rough and awkward, the rest of it is amazing. Interesting thoughts on time travel, a complex city of characters with buried secrets, hard-to-make decisions, multiple endings.

Unpopular opinion: I feel meh about it. It's very well written and a lot of thought went into the setting, but after travel back in time two or three times it became redundant. The best part was going through the abandoned palace. Some good fights and picking the master gates was fun.

I showed the Arbiter his helmet after I defeated him once and he decided it was time to end his law (is that the cool ending?).

Afterwards the Forgotten City music got stuck on a never ending loop no mater where I went in Skyrim. I tried the suggested fixes and they didn't work so I had to abandon that character.

I'm not saying I got the GOOD ending - got one of the neutral ones instead. I was basically very very cautious and refrained from making any accusations or breaking any laws or doing anything else really risky until I had exhausted every possible option that I could see.

I have to say I think this mod is massively overrated. The story is just not good imo.

the villain is super predictable (the instant the jarl appeared my thought was “I hope you’re not the villain because that would be way too obvious”), there’s a group of sidequests about homophobia despite homophobia flat-out not being a thing in elder scrolls lore, the super cliche twist of “homophobic guy is gay”, you cannot get the good ending without committing a murder because you need armor that the homophobic guy has and cannot get it any other way, even with maxed pickpocket, max speech, or by finishing his quests, the twist seems to be “bad guy is exploiting the rules to rape women”, which doesn’t really fit the tone of the rest of the mod imo...

plus the mod author seems to delete comments criticizing the mod, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s not a badly made mod, it’s fairly polished and has good music, but compared to vastly superior (imo of course) mods like Wheels of Lull, Beyond Reach, Wyrmstooth, etc, I don’t really know why it’s the one to get the most praise.

I hate when I see people on the internet claim that a plot twist is too predictable. Am I the only one that goes through things mostly oblivious? I didn't suspect the jarl from the beginning, though my suspicion did grow.

So glad this discussion thread was posted otherwise I may have missed this gem! I just finished it and I thought it was really well done... definitely deserved the awards it got. I highly recommend to anyone thinking of giving it a try!

Not very replayable IF you get the bestest ending, if not then try for it again. It's a great mod even if for just one playthrough; the author's writing, the set and dungeon design, the choice-and-consequence elements, and also, the amazing soundtracks. When I went into the depths and found the Arbiter for the first time, I got so much goosebumps. One of the most memorable experiences of my years playing this game and mods.

The two biggest flaws were the voice acting (Something that even the best mods always struggle with) and SPOILERS

Not having a way to get the chest piece without killing the NPC who has it. Everything else can be done within the rules the mod sets. Having to break the rules and fail exactly once doesn't make much sense.

Other than that. It's a favorite of mine. I love the final piece of gear you get for getting the best ending. Something Skyrim struggled with was giving good unique quest rewards. Forgotten City nailed this by giving something that was useful, unique and not overpowered. The whole experience was so rewarding.

I spent a good two days playing through the mod, probing and poking at it it over a weekend and finding different endings, ways to break the "law" repeatedly without breaking the city... I'm adapting it to fit a DnD campaign right now, because even if you switch out some of the lore bits from skyrim it still makes an excellent story with so many potential endings and courses of action.

I have to say I was extremely disappointed on my first run. Downloaded the mod, got to the forgotten city, met the jarl, spoke to his daughter about the underground tunnels, went there, completed the good side quest. Honestly took 20 mins. I went back and spoke to the npc's and they had all this stuff to say but I didn't get to experience any of it because I accidently finished to early? I know it could have been more fun but I shouldn't be able to completely bypass the story.